Some of cinema's most iconic shots of Chicago appear in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and the film is certainly Matthew Broderick's most iconic role. So, it's hard to watch the actor in the Chicago-set Diminished Capacity and not ask yourself, "is this what's happened to Ferris?" He is now relatively passive, paunchy and pitiful in the role of Cooper, a newspaper editor who has recently suffered a mildly debilitating concussion. And the character could be classified as yet another sad sack, one of three such parts he can be seen playing at present (Then She Found Me opened in April and is still in theaters; Finding Amanda debuted last week).

But is it fair that we most associate Broderick with Ferris, thereby continuing our disappointment in seeing him play one nebbish nobody after another? Couldn't we redirect our memories and accept that Broderick's modern roles are more like grown-up versions of Eugene Jerome, of Neil Simon's plays Brighton Beach Memoirs and Biloxi Blues, who he portrayed on Broadway as well as in the film adaptation of Biloxi? Were Eugene not the fictional incarnation of Simon and had he not therefore become a famous writer (and were he not from an earlier time period), the character surely could have gone on to be the pathetic teacher of Election or Then She Found Me or the absentminded editor of Diminished Capacity.

Disney has Pixar. Fox has Blue Sky. Paramount has, for now, Dreamworks. As seemingly the last studio to get into animated features, Universal has offered up the trailer for their maiden effort, The Tale of Despereaux, over at Yahoo! Movies.

Based upon the 2003 Newbury Award-winning novel by Kate DiCamillo, the film follows the adventurous antics of Despereaux (voiced by Matthew Broderick), a mouse with large ears and - I'm just guessing here - an even bigger heart, as he bucks the status quo of cowardice that seems to have imprisoned his kind to a fearsome existence.

Besides being an animated tale of a brave rodent with a tongue-tricky title and thus fated to merit comparison to those which have recently set lofty standards for similar fare, this project genuinely looks and sounds pleasant enough for all its yay-for-being-yourself familiarity. Besides, there's only more hope to be had when we're looking at a voice cast that includes the likes of Broderick, Kevin Kline, Dustin Hoffman, Sigourney Weaver, Stanley Tucci, William H. Macy, and Tony Hale, not to mention a Harry Potter veteran or two.

With its eye on the year-end holiday season, The Tale of Despereaux is scheduled to hit theaters on December 19th.

Cinematical has just received this exclusive poster for Diminished Capacity (click to enlarge), starring Matthew Broderick, Virginia Madsen and Alan Alda. Based on Sherwood Kiraly's novel, the film is -- to borrow an old quote from myself -- a "quiet little comedy starring Matthew Broderick as a guy suffering from memory loss due to a concussion who joins up with his Alzheimer's-impaired Uncle (Alan Alda) on a journey to a baseball memorabilia expo to sell a rare card."

While it first premiered back at Sundance, I managed to catch this gem at the Gen Art Film Festival a few months later and really enjoyed it. If you're from Chicago or happen to be a Cubs fan, definitely check out this flick because it's tailor-made for you. Everyone else should enjoy the subtle performances and quirky characters (Alan Alda is a blast to watch); I know I did. As I said back when I first saw it, it's the kind of film that just leaves you with good vibes. And don't we all need a little of that every now and then? You can check out the film's trailer over on Moviefone, and make sure you head out and support this indie winner when it hits theaters in NYC (Sunshine Theater), Los Angeles (Music Hall Theatre), Chicago (Century Centre & Renaissance Place) and On Demand (Your living room) this July 4.

Oh boy. Let me preface this review by saying that I truly go into all films (festival or otherwise) hoping to love what I see on the big screen. During the movie, I will always try my damnedest to find something worthwhile; something positive to say afterwards. But then you get to a film like Finding Amanda and there's really nowhere to go. Aside from a few cute one-liners, this film was a complete disaster -- to the point where I would strongly advise the creators not to screen this anywhere else until more work was done to it. I hate to be that guy, and I seriously have nothing against the filmmakers, but watching this flick felt like slowing down to check out an accident on the freeway. At first, it doesn't look so bad ... but then you get up close and everything is completely demolished.

Then again, we should've seen this coming. Right off the bat you have what feels like a comedy about a broken television writer/producer (Matthew Broderick) who, in order to prove to his wife that he's not a degenerate gambler/alcoholic, takes a trip to Las Vegas to convince their drug-addicted niece (Brittany Snow), who hooks for a living, to enter rehab. Gee, sounds like a laugh fest! But Broderick was great in smaller, quirkier films like Election; perhaps Finding Amanda would, well, find the right darkly comedic tone and take off from there? Yeah ... not so much. In fact, they should've renamed this one Finding the Right Tone.

Last night I attended the opening of the 2008 Gen Art Film Festival here in New York City, where the film Diminished Capacity enjoyed its New York premiere at the historic Ziegfeld Theater. Did you go? Really enjoyed this film; as one guy points out in the video above -- "it was cozy." That's exactly how I felt; it was this quiet little comedy starring Matthew Broderick as a guy suffering from memory loss due to a concussion who joins up with his Alzheimer's-impaired Uncle (Alan Alda) on a journey to a baseball memorabilia expo to sell a rare card. Great quirky characters (especially Dylan Baker as a crazed Cubs fan) and the kind of film that just leaves you with good vibes.

But anyway, our very good pal David Jr. is all over this year's festival (as he is every year) with his trusty video camera that tends to freak people out (watch Matthew Broderick's reaction). So if you weren't able to attend the festival last night, his videos give you a great glimpse at what it's like to enjoy a hot, hip Gen Art film event. Seriously, these people are very hot and very hip. I do not, in any way, shape or form, belong in their company. I'm just a slacker from Queens who's balding.

Enjoy the video. Visit DavidJr.com for more of his wacky videos. And head over to the official Gen Art Film Fest site to get tickets, see what's screening, blah blah blah. OH, and Diminished Capacity hits theaters on June 27. Go see it -- cute flick.

Either the little Parker-Broderick is in need of a cushy college fund, or Matthew Broderick is loving the push of a many-movies year. After making it big in the '80s (ah, Ladyhawke and Ferris...), the actor has always taken it easy, tackling 1-3 films a year, with a few off here and there. The one exception was 2004, where he had 3 features plus one direct-to-video flick. Granted, he had a lot of stage work to also keep him busy. Now he's got 5 new films on the way, starting with Jerry Seinfeld's Bee Movie next month, and it looks like 2008 could be the year of the cinematic Broderick.

Variety reports that the actor has signed on to lead an indie feature called Wonderful World with Brown Sugar star and Tony nominee Sanaa Lathan. Joshua Goldin, one of the writers on Darkman, has written the feature and will take the directorial chair when production starts next week in Shreveport, Louisiana. Not much is being said about the film, other than that it "centers on a depressed, divorced, and unemployed father who finds solace in his Senegalese roommate's sister." The film should be a nice reprieve from his usual comic stints, which will include Finding Amanda and Diminished Capacity next year.

The directing debut of Helen Hunt gets a passing grade, barely -- the story she's telling is as old as the hills, but Then She Found Me is still executed with style. Sometimes charming, occasionally funny, it never draws attention to itself as the work of a director with training wheels on. The film follows the journey of April Epner (Helen Hunt) a 39 year-old woman who is inexplicably marrying a man named Ben (Matthew Broderick) who is so inconsiderate and self-absorbed that no woman could find him to be primo marriage material. Just as they begin to realize their mistake, April gets the shock of a lifetime: her birth mother shows up and informs her that her real father was Steve McQueen. I kind of liked that premise and hoped the movie would go with it, but it turns out to be just a gag. April's mother, played well by Bette Midler, has a couple of screws loose. More to the point, she has a couple of screws loose when it's convenient, and provides sage and sound advice at other times.

Colin Firth co-stars as April's love interest, an emotionally volatile man with a kid who happens to be in the same school where April teaches, which leads to the kind of scene where the teacher is red-faced by having the kid notice that she is having a 'sleep over' with the father. Firth's character, Frank, tries hard to start up a relationship with April and aggressively pushes her onto his kids, but naturally he isn't very understanding of the fact that she's still seeing her almost-husband on the side, here and there. Usually, a romantic comedy of this type would set up the love triangle but make it more or less clear from the start who is going to win out and who isn't, so Then She Found Me deserves some credit for going a more complicated route and portraying all of these characters as seriously flawed. Frank, for instance, is prone to yelling and storming around in an absolute rage, which is never a good sign. Ben is worse, having nothing whatsoever going on in his life.

We've already told you about the first couple of deals to come out of the Toronto International Film Festival, but here's the first one with enough money changing hands for the trade publications to cite the figures.

ThinkFilm has bought U.S. rights to Then She Found Me, starring Helen Hunt, Bette Midler, Colin Firth, and Matthew Broderick, with Equinoxe Films taking Canadian rights. The total price tag, according to The Hollywood Reporter, is between $2.5 and $3 million.

Hunt directed the romantic comedy-drama, her first time in that capacity except for a few Mad About You episodes. Based on a novel by Elinor Lipman, Then She Found Me is about a woman (Hunt) who is contacted by her birth mother (Midler) just as her adoptive mother has died, her husband (Broderick) has left her, and she's met a new man (Firth).

After Mad About You ended in 1999, Hunt did a quick series of movies -- four in 2000 alone -- before taking a break. Since then, she's appeared only in Woody Allen's The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001), A Good Woman (2004), HBO movie Empire Falls (2005), and last year's Bobby. And it's too bad, because I really like her. I mean, who doesn't? Who doesn't like Helen Hunt?!

For that matter, we haven't seen much of Bette Midler in movies lately, either. Apart from The Stepford Wives in 2004, she hasn't been on film since 2000. That, I'm not complaining so much about.

Anyway, of course we'll keep you posted on release dates and other news as it becomes available.

John Hughes is a major hero of mine. I can't overstate the impact his movies had on me growing up, and he is a major influence on and inspiration to me now. As I mentioned in my National Lampoon's Vacation post today, there simply wasn't a better writer of film comedy in the 1980s. As far as his "teenager movies" go, 1986's Ferris Bueller's Day Off might just be his masterpiece. So it is with much apprehension that I report the following news -- there may be a sequel on the way. A completed script is being shopped around Hollywood, and Steve Spears at Stuck in the 80s has read it. So why am I not more excited? The reclusive Mr. Hughes had nothing to do with it. It was written by an Arizona-based screenwriter named Rick Rapier.

Titled Ferris Bueller 2: Another Day Off, the proposed sequel takes place on the eve of Bueller's fortieth birthday. Spears, a major Hughes enthusiast, calls Rapier's script "a blast. I read it in a single afternoon and was impressed with the care Rapier took with the original story and characters. The story has the same feel, humor and pace as the 1986 movie, which should please hard-core Ferris fans." The storyline finds Ferris 20 years older and living off a hugely successful self-help career, a la Tony Robbins. His best friend Cameron (played in '86 by Alan Ruck) manages the business. Turning 40 shakes Ferris up, and he decides to take the day off, "sending Cameron, his business associates and family into a frenzy." In addition to Ferris and Cameron, most of the supporting characters are in the script. Sloane Peterson (played in '86 by Mia Sara) is now "a Hollywood star going through a rough marriage." Ferris' sister Jeannie (Jennifer Grey) is now married to the guy from the police station (Charlie Sheen). Rooney (Jeffrey Jones) doesn't work for the school anymore, but has devoted his life to getting revenge on Ferris (What's he going to do at this point, murder him?). Even Ben Stein's character is in there, now working at an airline.

Rapier wants all the original actors to return, and he wants John Hughes to direct. I think the odds of that happening are mighty slim. For starters, Hughes has never directed a script he didn't write, and I strongly doubt he'd start by helming some random dude's take on one of his most beloved characters. In addition, Hughes hasn't directed a film since 1991's Curly Sue (the only bad film the man directed). Nobody wants Hughes to return more than me, but if a Bueller sequel was to be his comeback film, wouldn't he write it himself? I've been hearing rumors of a Ferris sequel for years (along with talk of sequels for Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink...), and I had always heard Matthew Broderick was down for it -- if Hughes wrote and directed. So where does that leave Rapier's script? I sure hope we're not going to see some direct-to-video craptacular with Charlie Schlatter being pursued by Richard Riehle. Anybody remember this?

Being a huge Seinfeld fan, I'm really looking forward to Dreamwork's Bee Movie this fall. Originally, Jerry Seinfeld and friends were creating these hilarious live-action shorts (check out both teasers here) to promote the film, instead of giving us a normal trailer. Basically, they consisted of Seinfeld dressed up in a big goofy bee costume, while he awkwardly attempts to shoot scenes for the movie. With cameos from folks like Chris Rock and Steven Spielberg, they're pretty fun to watch, and provide an interesting lead-in to the real trailer that AOL Moviefone just released. Finally, we get a good look at some of the outstanding animation in glorious HD; the tennis ball scene being my favorite -- damn, does that look good.

In the film, Seinfeld voices Barry B. Benson; a recent college graduate who isn't so crazy about making honey for the rest of his life. Upon leaving the hive and discovering that humans consistently steal the honey for their own greedy consumption, Benson decides to sue them, er, us. Though none of that is in the trailer (they're probably saving that for a larger trailer down the line), what we do get is a rather funny sequence in which Benson cautiously maneuvers his way around the city streets (with amusing consequences), then meets up with a woman (Renée Zellweger) who can actually hear him talk. It's your typical "animated animal lost in unfamiliar territory," but I'm stoked to see what Seinfeld writers Spike Feresten and Andy Robin (as well as Seinfeld himself) have in store for us. In case you're wondering, pic also stars Matthew Broderick, John Goodman, Chris Rock, Eddie Izzard, Alan Arkin and Kathy Bates, among others. What, no Kramer?! Bee Movie buzzes into theaters on November 2.